


Don't Look Back

by fEl24601



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 08:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11436732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fEl24601/pseuds/fEl24601
Summary: A demigod weeps for Steve Trevor.Perhaps his time in the Underworld will be short-lived.





	Don't Look Back

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, this has been done before.  
> And yep, I wrote another one.  
> Enjoy.

_A burst of light brighter than flame and just as devastating. A scream that ripped through the morning like a blade through flesh, raw and terrible, a sound of purest agony._

 

The following minutes occurred to the soundtrack of Diana’s broken heart beating louder than the drums of Themyscira in her ears, drowning out all else but the mantra of a bold and half-shouted ‘I love you’ that repeated over and over in her head. The loveliest thing she’d ever heard. The most painful thing she’d ever heard.

Dimly she was aware of young soldiers tilting their faces to the dawn sky, relaxing for the first time in months, laying down their weapons because something had changed, had ended, but not knowing what.

Chief, Charlie, and Sameer were all right. It was mere minutes before they were rushing to her, embracing her as a group. Perhaps they spoke to her, words of condolence or praise or anything else, but she heard nothing. She saw nothing. Nothing except that horrible flash of light, and the gruesome images her mind conjured up that went along with it. The idea of hands, eyes, limbs, hair, scattered to the forest below, replaced by acrid orange smoke and the echo of awful, beautiful last words.

It was a gorgeous day in a way that felt positively cruel. All around people rejoiced, clutching loved ones and crying tears of joy, and the sky helped them by glowing a shade of brightest blue. A blue all too familiar and all too painful to look at. And truly, it was a happy day. It was a final straw in the signing of the armistice which ended the war just 3 days later. She had defeated Ares, but humans, in their own wonderful ways, had shown her again how good they could be. How one good man, with courage and strength of will, could change the course of a war and save thousands of lives.

Though no one knew what truly happened on the airfield that night, Diana was touted as a hero. She escaped the celebrating as quickly as possible, numb to joy. Objectively she was pleased too see peace befall the land, though she could not enjoy it yet.

She ran to the forest beneath the plane’s explosion, hoping beyond hope to find a mangled body, injured but breathing, somehow miraculously alive despite the fire, the gas, the shrapnel, the fall. She searched for hours, knowing all the while that it was impossible. She searched, let her hopes rise and fall with every distant crumpled shape emerging from the black smoke.

Finding the badge from his stolen German uniform was too much. She collapsed on her hands and knees in the mud and sobbed until her throat burned.

 

She and her brave, remaining crew took a train back to London that evening. Chief offered to come with her to find Etta, but she shook her head with a gentle smile and told all three of them to go and rest, find their own loved ones, be happy.

She and Etta cried all night.

When the armistice was signed on the 11th everyone took to the streets, cheering and singing and kissing their dear ones. She touched his picture and tried not to imagine him there with her in that jubilant crowd, euphoric and exuberant. _Dragging her by her hand to the very centre of it all despite her meek protests. Squinting up in the early morning sky at the confetti pouring from windows above, his arms around her, her hands on his chest. A kiss so joyful she was lifted off the ground, her hands on either side of his beaming face._

 

_The promise of five more minutes with him._

_Three, even._

Just a few more seconds to say the couple little words that would at least assuage the absolute regret that she felt each day, that she got to go on knowing that she was loved, while he died alone, thousands of feet in the air, without that same luxury.

 

It would be months before she could go a day without bursting into dreadful, gasping tears, his watch being her only small comfort, ticking soothingly against her breast as she clutched it. A year before she could fall asleep without him behind her eyelids.

5 years before she realized that humans in the same circumstance would come to love again. 6 years before she realized that she never would.

10 years before someone came to visit her and changed everything.

***

 

As it turns out, every belief about what happens after death is true. “The one you experience is the one you believe in most,” Charon told Steve as they crossed the Styx.

Steve didn’t realize that he believed in anything, except Diana. _Well, this is neat,_ he thought.

He and dozens other souls on the boat were ushered to shore. Diana was not among them, meaning ( _hopefully,_ he thought) that she had been successful in taking down Ares. The underworld was dark and cavernous, sometimes cold and drafty and other moments the kind of damp warmth that presses down on your lungs and gives you the urge to shake it off. Steve, bewildered, trying desperately to just be absorbed by his surroundings so he wouldn’t think about his final moments of life too much, followed the other souls down an immense corridor. His gaze bore into the back of the head of the man in front of him, trying to focus on the rough stone under his feet and the sound of water dripping somewhere nearby. _Not_ the look on Diana’s face when she told him, even without being able to hear what he said that _“whatever it is, I can do it. Let me do it.” Not_ the sound of her desperately calling his name as he ran to the ill-fated aircraft. Certainly not the image of her unable to look anywhere but his face as they danced in the snow, pressing closer and closer together, her hand in his resting on his chest.

They emerged into an immense chamber of rough black stone, empty but for a throne-like chair on a high dais overlooking them, and several tunneled pathways leading out. A weathered and somewhat frightening looking man lounged in the chair, uninterested. A young boy stood next to him and read off an enormous scroll trailing across the floor.

“Luke Fray, Fields of Punishment. Alexandra Granger, Isles of Elysium. Steve Trevor, Isles of Elysium. All else, Fields of Asphodel.”

Dutifully, the other souls began to march through the tunnels, somehow knowing precisely what all those things meant and how to get to there. Steve located the one girl going her own direction the crowd and attempted to follow her, but was stopped by a resonating _“Wait, Steve Trevor.”_

He paused and glanced up at the man reclining on the throne. The man was adjusting himself, sitting forward in the chair and leaning with his elbows on his knees. From his high perch he scrutinized Steve, standing on the rocky ground below. Steve stared back, trying to keep his expression neutral.

“Hello, Steve,” the man said. He paused, waiting for a response.

“Hello, uh, sir,” replied Steve uncertainly.

The man turned idly to the scroll-bearing boy next to him. “What was Mr Trevor’s assignment?”

“Elysium, your grace,” said the boy.

“Hmm,” pondered the man, turning to stare once again at Steve. The room was now empty except for the three of them.

“Steve Trevor, you died a hero’s death. For this you have been granted eternity in paradise on the Isles of Elysium.” Steve blinked in surprise at the man. “However,” the man continued. “A god weeps for you.”

Steve’s stomach lurched. _A god?_

The man tilted his head as if listening intently to something. “Or, perhaps, not a god but a demigod. The cry is different than that of a god.”

Steve raised his eyebrows at the man.

“Forgive me,” said the man. “You are confused. I am Hades, god of the underworld.”

_Oh._

“It is rare for a god to weep for the loss of a human. I think…” he turned to the boy. “Elysium, yes, but… perhaps he should join Eurydice.”

“Yes, my lord,” chirped the boy, who hopped down from the dais and gestured for Steve to follow.

“Uh,” Steve turned to look at Hades as he was led from the room. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“And you, Steve Trevor,” said Hades.

 

***

 

By 1929 Diana lived alone in a small flat in London. Though she rather hated the city, she could not bring herself to leave it even 10 years later. One drizzly evening she returned home from the office (she had managed to get a job with British Intelligence, a position so undercover that they denied her involvement at all. Easy to say, for she was a woman) and immediately knew something was wrong. The smell of ozone, lingering from nonexistent lightning, hung in the air of her kitchen. She drew her knife out from under her coat, ready.

“Who’s there?” she called into the apartment.

An unfamiliar man stepped around the corner, eyes crackling with _lightning._

“Diana,” he murmured. “I’m so proud of you.”

It couldn’t be. It was impossible- and yet her knife was lowering of its own accord. “ _Father?”_ she whispered. He nodded solemnly.

“You have saved humanity so many times over, my child,” he said, as thunder rumbled overhead. “I only wish I had gotten to meet you sooner.”

“Mother said the gods were dead,” Diana said before she could stop herself.

Zeus chuckled darkly. “We may as well have been. But with Ares gone, our power is growing once again. And now I am strong enough to come and see you, and,” he paused and the lightning in his eyes seemed to spark with more warmth. “Offer you a gift.”

Diana straightened, and bowed her head, knowing that gods did not offer gifts easily or often. “I appreciate the gesture, father.”

“You do not yet know what it is, my child.”

She looked at him again. “I am grateful nonetheless.”

His eyes burned into her. “Ten years ago you ended a devastating war, and your victory did not come without pain of its own.”

Loneliness stabbed through her as it often did, and she fought to repress it as she did each time. _Not now,_ she told her aching heart.

“Not all who are lost are lost forever,” Zeus said.

Her eyes snapped open and her breath caught in her throat. “Wh-“ she caught her breath, “what do you mean?”

Zeus, king of the gods, her _father,_ waved his hand and a doorway suddenly opened in her wall. The open passageway whistled with clammy wind and the whispers of eons of souls. Her heart burned with hope.

“My gift to you is this,” Zeus said. “A chance. I wish I could give him to you outright, but I trust you understand how this must go.” He stepped forward then and placed one all-powerful hand on her shoulder. Diana’s eyes welled with tears.

“Good luck, my daughter,” he said. “You deserve happiness.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, unable to produce a stronger sound.

With a crack of lightning, Zeus was gone, and Diana’s heart _sang._

 

***

 

Elysium was lovely, perfect little islands as far as the eye could see. Each one was different, he saw as he passed by in his little rowboat. The heroes who dwelled upon them could design them to their liking. One featured a beautiful wooden house and easels bearing stunning paintings surrounded it. One was particularly large and a woman rode on horseback around it, through wheat fields and over babbling brooks. The one he seemed to be approaching was small, with a woven hammock strung between two cherry trees and a pond in the middle. A woman who Steve could only describe as _wispy_ sat on the sand, awaiting his arrival. She looked nearly transparent, and rather like a gust of wind could blow her straight to the sky.

Steve clambered out of the rowboat and turned to bade farewell to the boy who rowed it, but the boy was already sailing away.

“You must be Steve,” said the woman, rising slowly to her feet.

“And you’re Eurydice?” Steve asked.

“It is good to meet you,” she said. “Come, sit.” They moved to the edge of the pond and sat on its grassy banks.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” began Steve, needing to get a lot of questions answered. “But why does every island seem to have just one person on it, but I’ve been sent to you?”

Eurydice narrowed her eyes at him. “You do not know,” she stated. Steve looked blankly at her. “Did Hades tell you nothing?”

Steve shook his head. “He said a god weeps for me. Uh, a demigod.”

Eurydice nodded. “Yes,” she said, as though that answered everything.

“I’m not sure I know any demigods,” Steve said, hoping for more of an explanation.

“Demigods are the child of a human and a god. They may not age, they may have extraordinary strength, or abilities, or talents.”

The image of Diana soaring through the air in Veld and crushing the bell tower filled his mind. _Ah._

At this point, this was hardly the most illogical thing Steve had ever heard.

“I may know a demigod,” he corrected. “But that doesn’t explain…. this.”

Eurydice sighed. “If you do not know then I cannot tell you, it’s not my right,” she said. Steve scrubbed a hand over his face in exasperation. “But,” she said, “I can tell you my own story.” She looked at him very pointedly, as though he should take greater meaning from what she was going to say. He met her eyes and nodded slowly. “Go on,” Steve said.

Eurydice brushed her feathery hair out of her face and smiled sadly.

“My love was a demigod. Orpheus. He was the child of Apollo, and he could play music that could enchant anyone. Shortly before our marriage I was bitten by a snake and died.” Steve’s heart lurched. “But the gods are kind to their children, and demigods sometimes are given opportunities. Orpheus,” she spoke his name as if it itself were music, “loved me so dearly that he was gifted the chance to retrieve me from Hades.” She met Steve’s eyes again, very deliberately.

Steve’s dead heart raced (he didn’t have the energy to think about how.) He was flying on a wind of hope. “Yes,” he breathed.

“But bringing someone out of the underworld is not easy,” she explained. “Hades told him that once he found me he was to turn around and begin walking out of the underworld. He was forbidden to speak, or touch me, and if he so much as laid eyes on me, to see if I was all right or to check if I was still following him, I would be snatched back to Hades. He had to just walk and trust that I was following him.”

Steve nodded, mind racing. That didn’t seem so bad. Diana was the strongest person on Earth. This would be a cake-walk. _Goodness knows I’d follow her anywhere._

Eurydice placed a hand on his arm. “But it was not that simple.”

Great.

“The underworld tried to make Orpheus’ mission very difficult. All around us were images trying to persuade Orpheus to leave me behind- my previous lovers, any immoral thing I’d ever done. The underworld hurt me, not really, but enough that he heard my screams, longed to help me. I would heal almost immediately,” she clarified, seeing Steve’s wide eyes. “But the pain was unfathomable. As soon as I healed, another attack began. And Orpheus tried so hard,” she smiled wistfully, gazing over the pond. “We were nearly out, I think, when he began to doubt himself. He turned around for just an instant to see that I was still with him, and just like that- I was flying backwards, down and down until I landed here.” She patted the soil of her island. “When the snake bit me I went to Asphodel. I think Hades pitied me when Orpheus looked, and he granted me Elysium.”

Steve’s head swam.

He forced himself to make words. “How long was it- before he came for you?”

“Time passes differently here than on earth. I believe it was several years for poor Orpheus, but just days for me.”

Steve could not look up from his hands. His heart surged with hope but his mind whirled with the horrors he could face on the journey. _Any immoral thing I’ve ever done._ And he couldn’t imagine what Diana might do if she heard him being hurt just behind her.

“Could you-“ he choked out, “he couldn’t speak to you but could you talk to him?”

“Yes,” she said sadly. “It wasn’t enough for him, though, to believe that I was still there.”

 _Okay,_ he thought. _This is doable._

He would wether any attack for the chance to see Diana again, hold her again, feel her lips, her skin again.

_More time._

“So that is my story,” said Eurydice. “Make of it what you will,” she said with a small smile. “A demigod wept for me once. May your story end happier than mine.”

 

***

 

Diana wasted no time donning her armour and gauntlets and grabbing her lasso, sword, and shield from where they rested in her bedroom. She removed Steve’s watch, afraid of losing it in the underworld, and laid it gently in the box she kept on her dresser for items of such importance. She stood in the doorway and took one deep, shuddering breath. She allowed her eyes to fall closed, and let her mind wander to a place that she rarely permitted. _Steve wrapping her lasso around his own wrist, telling her in a low, determined voice that he would take her to the front. The knowing look they exchanged whenever Sameer was being particularly outrageous, small smiles on their faces. Her whirling around the town square in Veld, knocking out opponents as fast as she could, and pausing for a moment when one dropped dead in front of her. Turning to realize that Steve was at her back, gun in hand, doing everything he could to aid her mission, keep her safe, make her job just a little bit easier. The uncertain look on his face when she met his eyes in her bedroom that night, letting her gaze do the talking as he slowly shut the door behind him, trying to make sure that this was what she wanted, giving her every opportunity to change her mind. His hands in her hair. His lips on her collarbone, on her hip, on her thighs. Waking up in his arms, the look of pure happiness when he opened his eyes and realized that she was there. “I wish we had more time. I love you.”_

__

She stepped through the doorway.

 

***

 

It only took 3 days.

For 3 days Steve pestered with Eurydice with questions, about Orpheus, the journey, their tragedy, about the underworld itself, about details of other Greek myths that he had never learned or was rusty on. He explored every inch of the admittedly tiny island (it did not take long) and even ventured over to other islands via a little rowboat Eurydice kept tied up on the far shore. He met Achilles himself, who was happy to hear that his story, at least, was still somewhat well known.

Steve did everything he could to keep his mind busy, his hands busy. He dared not make any assumptions about how the journey would go, or what would await him back in the land of the living. He tried not to imagine domestic life with Diana, cooking her breakfast while she got ready for work, shaving in the bathroom mirror while she pulled up her pantyhose in the reflection behind him. _It’s been years for her,_ he reminded himself. She may just miss her friend and tour guide. She may feel guilty. _She might be with someone else,_ a bitter little voice in the back of his mind chided.

No, it was easier to focus on helping Eurydice weave a new hammock. Easier to watch little fish glint in the water lapping at the shores of the island. She would come. Everything else would matter later.

 

***

 

“Uncle,” she said, kneeling before Hades, her sword tucked respectfully at her side.

“Diana, I wondered when I would see you,” Hades said with a grin. “You have come for Steve Trevor.”

“Yes.” She looked at him, though remained on one knee.

“I trust you understand the magnitude of this honour.” He raised a critical eyebrow. “Removing the dead from my realm is not a favour granted lightly.”

“I understand,” she said solemnly, “and I am so grateful.”

Hades regarded her with something akin to fondness. “You will both be led to a chamber not far from here. You may not look at him until you reach the land of the living. You may not speak and you may not touch him. Just walk until you reach daylight. Any breach of these rules and he will be returned to my care permanently.”

“Yes, uncle.”

“Let us go, then.”

 

Hades led her down a steeply descending, dark corridor for several minutes until they reached a damp cavern. A path opened up on the opposite wall, sloping slightly upward.

“That is the way out,” Hades indicated. He positioned her facing the pathway and instructed her not to look back. She heard footsteps approaching behind her, coming to rest quite near.

“Remember the rules, Diana,” Hades murmured. “I wish you luck. You have done the gods a great service, and for that I wish you happiness. Go”

Slowly Diana began to walk, hearing the footsteps behind her match her pace. Hades vanished in a puff of smoke (she knew it to be unnecessary and purely for theatrical purposes) and they were alone as they began the journey. Immediately she had to remind herself she was not permitted to speak, for she so longed to hear his voice.

Luckily, he seemed to read her mind as usual.

“ _Diana,”_ breathed the most beautiful voice. Her steps faltered briefly at the sound. She bit her lip to keep quiet.

“Y- you’re _here._ You’re bringing me back.” His voice was thick with emotion, and it brought a lump to her throat. “I know you can’t speak, but I’m still allowed to. I’ve heard a lot about this path, and I don’t know how much you know but it’s _not_ going to be fun,” he chuckled darkly. “But whatever happens, I’m right here. And I’m staying with you.”

For a while the path was just that, a dim and somewhat grungy path, but altogether uneventful. Before long, though, the air shifted. Changed. It was suddenly very heavy and somehow sharp, pressing down and biting into her throat when she breathed. Her hands reached up to her throat as if to check if it was intact. Then there were souls, transparent and floating like ghosts, swirling around them, whispering.

_You would save him? A murderer?_

_Liar, murderer, smuggler._

_He has killed more than you know._

And then there were images flashing around them, Steve pulling the trigger from a trench, killing Germans hundreds of feet away, people he couldn’t see. Steve in a plane, dropping a bomb on a German operation, killing dozens, maybe hundreds. Steve interrogating someone, finishing with a bullet to the head while the man cried at his feet, begging for mercy.

When Steve spoke next his voice was weak. “It’s true, all of it’s true,” he choked out. Diana shook her head, wishing she could communicate with him in some way. The war did terrible things to people and made them do terrible things in return. Steve followed orders. Steve had killed. Steve was still a good man- imperfect, but good. She heard a strangled sob behind her and bit down hard on her tongue to keep from consoling him.

The underworld tried a different tactic.

Steve seducing Dr Maru in German High Command, doing it _so easily_ that it almost seemed true. A much younger Steve and a beautiful redheaded girl, hand in hand and laughing together as they slipped off into a corner together.

Diana almost laughed aloud. _You’ll have to try harder than that,_ she thought.

Steve barked a laugh behind her, ever on the same wavelength as she. “That’s not something I expected to see,” he chuckled. “That was in college, my first girlfriend. It lasted 6 weeks. She was nice. Hope she’s doing well.” Diana grinned. _What a wonderful man,_ she thought.

Then the attacks began. Diana walked with ease, feeling no physical discomfort brought on by the onslaught of the underworld, but suddenly from behind her she heard a gasp of pain.

“Agh- so this is- ah-“ he was gasping, his word peppered with sounds of pain. “This is what— Eurydice talked about. I- ahhh.” He sighed with relief, as though the pain was gone. He spoke quickly. “It’s going to hurt me. It’s not real and I heal fast but it’s going to be brutal. Whatever you do don’t help m- AH!” he cried, and she heard the sound of something slicing through flesh. Steve howled in agony, breaths coming in short pants. Then it stopped. And then came the sound of snapping bone, and Steve hitting the ground as he screamed. Diana froze, unable to move forward but forbidding herself to turn around.

“Diana don’t-“ he pleaded, gasping and crying. “Keep going. I’m here, I’m-“

It continued. She forced her feet forward, one terrible footstep at a time. The sounds kept coming, flesh ripping, bones crunching, a horrific tearing she could only fathom the cause of, and endlessly, Steve’s agonized screams. She squeezed her eyes up, fists balled so tight her nails drew blood, jaw gritted painfully tight. Tears poured from the corners of her closed eyes as she forced her feet forward, again and again and again while her love was ripped to pieces behind her.

After an unimaginably long time, she felt a breeze. She slowed her steps and opened her eyes, hoping beyond hope to see daylight.

It was No Man’s Land again.

The whiz of a bullet came shooting at her, and she deflected it quickly with her gauntlets. Then the mysterious, unseen forces opened fire, and Steve’s screams were accompanied by the snaps and cracks of rapid artillery fire. _This_ was a No Man’s Land she could not cross. For no matter how capable she was or how badly she wanted to, she could not protect Steve from the attack. _She could not protect Steve from the explosion._

_She could not protect Steve, could never protect Steve._

She shook her head, closing her eyes again and remembering the dance in the snow, the dance in the snow, the dance in the snow.

She kept walking.

Then came the gas. It filled the air around them, harmless to Diana, but burning Steve’s lungs from the inside out. He coughed horribly, gasping for air and choking on his own decaying lungs. For a moment it would stop, allow him to heal, and then it would start anew.

All the while Steve, whenever he could catch the breath to do so, spoke words of encouragement to her- to _her,_ the one just walking, as though he wasn’t the one being tortured. Her heart clenched, _ached,_ reached with a visceral feeling back to the man behind her, longing to be pressed near to his again.

Finally, it stopped. The path turned back into just a dark tunnel, and Steve’s cries stopped. He was breathing heavily still.

“I’m all right, I’m all right,” he murmured. “We’re almost there. Probably.”

She heard him pause and wished, _wished_ she could turn and see his face for just a moment, hold him for a moment while he recovered from the pain.

“I just wish I could touch you,” he said, reflecting her thoughts as usual. She cracked a smile despite the fresh horror in her mind.

The path stopped at what appeared to be a wall.

“What in the-“ Steve murmured.

Then Diana realized. _Oh._ It was a staircase, so steep and with steps so narrow it appeared to be just a wall at first glance. She took a deep breath, hoping it would communicate her feelings to Steve, and began to climb.

They climbed for hours.

When she heard Steve’s breath start to turn to a laboured pant, she slowed, and from time to time took breaks to just rest against the rock for his benefit. There came a point where even her muscles quaked with exertion, and she wondered, stunned at how Steve was holding up. If she, a demigod, was fatiguing, what condition was he in?

Finally, he let his exhaustion be known. “Hang on,” he gasped. “You’re being great about…” he caught is breath some more, “waiting for me, but _damn_ this is steep.” She was so tired she nearly turned her head to flash him a tired smile. “Eyes up,” he reminded her just in time. Her head snapped forward again, shoulders sagging to communicate her frustration to him. He chuckled. “I know.” Another minute and he was ready again. “Let’s finish this.”

They climbed for ages more, and finally, _finally,_ came to the top: a stretch of stone leading to a simple, unassuming wooden door. Diana’s wobbling legs pushed her from the final step onto the flat ground, and she heard Steve practically drag himself up behind her. She cocked her head down and to the side, asking silently if he was all right, if they could go on.

“Go,” he panted.

They walked, aching to their very bones, the final stretch of the journey. Diana’s exhausted hand touched the doorknob and turned, and they stepped forward into glorious, beaming sunlight on a rooftop overlooking London at dawn. But none of that mattered.

She whirled around and _finally_ laid her tired eyes, exhausted from a decade of tears, on the face of her love. He was precisely as she left him, though grimy from their horrific journey and looking nearly dead on his feet. He wore pieces from the German uniform he died in, he had left the jacket but wore the pants and shirt. His eyes, as stunningly blue as ever, were shiny with tears.

“ _Steve,”_ was all she could say, and then they were in each other’s arms.

She clutched the back of his shirt with one hand and his hair with the other, tears on her cheeks. His face was buried in her hair, arms wrapped tightly around her, murmuring “thank you, _thank you,”_ over and over. She was shaking her head, and she pushed herself away from him just far enough so she could see his face. Her hands came to brush the tears from his cheeks.

“Steve, you brave, wonderful man,” she breathed. “You-“ she didn’t even have words. She met his eyes. “How long was it, for you?”

“Days,” he said. “I was on that airfield 3 days ago.” He paused, his expression strange as he knew the same could not be said for her. “How long for you?”

Diana’s eyes welled. “Too long,” she whispered, one hand coming to rest over his heart. “Ten years.”

His eyes blew wide open as he let out a shaky breath. “ _Ten years,_ Diana and you-“

“And nothing has changed for me,” she said solidly, looking him in the eye, hoping he would understand her. “Ten years and my grief was just as fresh as the day it- you-“ Tears spilled over her eyes and streamed down her cheeks.

He kissed her tears away while she fought to control her shuddering breaths, clutching at the fabric of his shirt. “Steve,” she said, and he loved the sound of her saying his name. “I love you too.”

“ _Diana,”_ he said again and this time, it sounded like a promise. A vow. When they kissed, a breeze whipped around them in the dawn light, but Diana was warm in the comfort of Steve’s arms. She kissed him with the desperation of a woman denied her love for a decade, afraid that if she closed her eyes for too long he would vanish again. But he was real, firm and warm under hands, sweet and soft under her lips. She felt his tears touch her skin as they kissed.

When they parted, he leaned his forehead on hers and spent a long moment getting lost in her eyes, so bright and full of love they almost hurt to look at. Finally, he whispered “what now?”

Diana’s face broke into a beaming smile. “I suppose, now we go home.” 

“Home,” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said as though that answered everything. He realized she meant for him to live with her, as his apartment was no doubt gone after his 10 year death.

“I think,” Diana said, laying her head against his shoulder and breathing in his familiar scent, “it’s time for breakfast. And the newspaper.”

Steve couldn’t speak. He just nodded and held her close.


End file.
